I'm thinking of buying my first Pi for a retro gaming build. The Raspberry Pi 3 is already quite impressive for the cost and may very well already suit my needs.

I'm considering holding off until February to see if there is a 2017 upgraded release.

I've seen other wishlist/speculation threads get locked due to personal attacks, but I don't see why we can't attempt to have a civil and reasonable speculation/wishlist thread.

I've read in other threads not to expect a real upgrade from the Pi 3 for 3 years or so, but the foundation has had major releases in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. After the initial gap of two years, they've had at least one model release a year for the past three years. The trend suggests there will be at least one new model/upgrade next year.

Some of the frequent requests seem best handled with accessories as they aren't needed for most cases, or would raise per unit costs beyond the goal of the foundation.

I'm curious what people think are reasonable guesses at what we might see next year,

Given the popularity of the Pi in media servers and gaming systems, I'd personally like to see a bump in the GPU portion of the SoC (which apparently hasn't changed at all since 2012). I'm hoping a new GPU would bring better gaming performance, h265 support, perhaps HDMI 2.0 support. 4k, etc.

enderandrew wrote:I'm thinking of buying my first Pi for a retro gaming build. The Raspberry Pi 3 is already quite impressive for the cost and may very well already suit my needs.

I'm considering holding off until February to see if there is a 2017 upgraded release.

I've seen other wishlist/speculation threads get locked due to personal attacks, but I don't see why we can't attempt to have a civil and reasonable speculation/wishlist thread.

I've read in other threads not to expect a real upgrade from the Pi 3 for 3 years or so, but the foundation has had major releases in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. After the initial gap of two years, they've had at least one model release a year for the past three years. The trend suggests there will be at least one new model/upgrade next year.

Some of the frequent requests seem best handled with accessories as they aren't needed for most cases, or would raise per unit costs beyond the goal of the foundation.

I'm curious what people think are reasonable guesses at what we might see next year,

Given the popularity of the Pi in media servers and gaming systems, I'd personally like to see a bump in the GPU portion of the SoC (which apparently hasn't changed at all since 2012). I'm hoping a new GPU would bring better gaming performance, h265 support, perhaps HDMI 2.0 support. 4k, etc.

enderandrew wrote:I've read in other threads not to expect a real upgrade from the Pi 3 for 3 years or so, but the foundation has had major releases in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. After the initial gap of two years, they've had at least one model release a year for the past three years. The trend suggests there will be at least one new model/upgrade next year.

With the Pi3, hardware-wise they have wrung every last feature out of the SoC & its peripherals they can - there's not a single GPIO pin going spare. Those things you mention are on everyone's wish list, but require more substantial updates to the SoC than we have seen over the yearly cycles you have identified. So likely out with the annual cycles for Pi4 release. Instead we can look forwards to Eric Anholt's GPU driver, CM3, Pi3A, & at the bottom end perhaps a revised Zero with an upgraded arm core.

enderandrew wrote:I've read in other threads not to expect a real upgrade from the Pi 3 for 3 years or so, but the foundation has had major releases in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. After the initial gap of two years, they've had at least one model release a year for the past three years. The trend suggests there will be at least one new model/upgrade next year.

With the Pi3, hardware-wise they have wrung every last feature out of the SoC & its peripherals they can - there's not a single GPIO pin going spare. Those things you mention are on everyone's wish list, but require more substantial updates to the SoC than we have seen over the yearly cycles you have identified. So likely out with the annual cycles for Pi4 release. Instead we can look forwards to Eric Anholt's GPU driver, CM3, Pi3A, & at the bottom end perhaps a revised Zero with an upgraded arm core.

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